Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Employees Volunteer At New EAPrep Campus

A team of volunteer employees from The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf held their annual service day on September 5 at East Austin College Prep’s new MLK campus. A crew of 17 of the coffee chain’s administrators and store management staff painted rooms, moved furniture, cleaned & polished the pews in the performance hall and vacuumed and removed spots from the carpet as well as cleaned the campus grounds, washed windows and more.

CBTL says on their website that among their core principles is “a fundamental, unwavering commitment to the concept of social responsibility.” We got a chance to ask Chief Operations Officer Bill Duffy why. “It’s just a part of who we are and a part of what we want our company culture to represent,” Duffy told us. “I have a strong belief that my role as a corporate citizen is not just to give to the community but to teach young people (much of our staff) about what philanthropy is. We try and lead them to water and let them decide what it means to them from there.” No wonder Duffy was one of Giving City Austin’s top 21 philanthropists of the year in 2012.

Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf supports a variety of non-profit partners through their Caring Cup wristband initiative which gives CBTL customers exposure to worthy causes they might otherwise not have. EAPrep is proud to have been selected for CBTL’s annual service day. In appreciation of the staff who pitched in to make the new campus shine, we will name each one of them here.